Captain Phillips (***)

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Catherine Keener, Faysal Ahmed, Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Corey Johnson, Chris Mulkey, Yul Vasquez, Max Martini, Omar Berdouni

Seen: November 15^th 2013

*** Out of ****

Paul Greengrass has directed some very good movies, both fictional and based on true events. He directed the incredible The Bourne Supremacy and the even better The Bourne Ultimatum. His 2006 effort, United 93, was a chilling and brilliant recreation of the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 on 11 September 2001, and in 2010 he made the excellent Green Zone, with Matt Damon; again (loosely) based on true events, but this time it was wartime and political game-playing taking centre stage. Now he is back to recreating true events with Captain Phillips, a harrowing account of real-life piracy on the Indian Ocean. Tom Hanks is in great form and Paul Greengrass knows exactly how to maximize the tension throughout the entire movie, and together they produce a very engaging and terrifying movie.

Richard Phillips was given command of the MV Maersk Alabama, a container ship headed from Salalah in Oman round the Horn of Africa to Mombasa in Kenya in 2009. He was wary of pirate activity in the area, and during a safety drill, they become aware of two skiffs chasing them, claiming to be Somali authorities, and they manage to outrun them. The pirates are however desperate for the possible financial gain, and the next day they return in one skiff under the command of Abduwali Muse (Abdi), and they manage to board the Alabama, taking control after Captain Phillips manages to cut the ship’s power and hide the crew.

Captain Phillips offers the pirates the cash in the ship’s safe, which amounts to $30,000, but the pirates are under strict orders to ransom the ship for millions. In the panic and confusion created by the situation some of the crew members manage to overpower the pirates, but it backfires when the pirates once again get the upper hand after the crew try to force them off the ship in the ship’s lifeboat as the pirates force Phillips into the lifeboat with them just before launch. With a hostage on board the pirates head for the coast but they succumb to their khat (a herb stimulant) addiction, they lose contact with their command ship, and they are intercepted by the US Navy Destroyer, the USS Bainbridge. The hostage situation becomes a stale-mate as the pirates flounder in international waters with the imposing threat of the US navy and a few SEALs hanging over them, and the movie heads towards a tense conclusion.

While the movie started on a bit of a blunt note as Captain Phillips gets ready for his trip at home, it picks up soon enough and the viewer is thrown into very real terror. Tom Hanks is his usual phenomenal self, and one scene in particular will have everyone almost breaking down with him in empathy. The surprise here is the Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi, who truly creates a menacing villain who really stands up to Hanks’ Phillips. I read about the SEAL operation in another book, the very intriguing Damn Few by Navy SEAL Rorke Denver earlier this year, and seeing it recreated was quite interesting. Captain Phillips is a chilling retelling of a very scary story, another very good movie in Paul Greengrass’ canon.